Monday, October 15, 2007

Cotton Balls And Vacant Stares

I need cotton balls.

I need cotton balls, and this need hasfilled me with such dread I can feel the blood freeze in my veins.Because needing cotton balls as I do means I need to make a trip to thecorner drugstore. And I'm fairly certain that if I step foot in thatplace one more time, I will lose my mind.

I hear there was a timein American history, when drug stores were hangouts. Places filled withknowledgeable, friendly folks who were happy to fill a prescription andfetch you an egg cream.

The only hanging out I've ever done atdrug stores is in the snaking lines at the cash register, waiting invain for some counter cud-chewer to comprehend why the 80-year-oldcancer patient at the head of the line does not want to go home withonly half the medications his doctor prescribed.

Now, I make noclaim to brilliance: I volunteered for a life of journalistic poverty.I still don't know all the state capitals and sometimes I mix up myright and my left. But I'm not in charge of dispensing life-sustainingmedication to people. And all that I ask, is that the people who are besmarter than me.

"Um. Yeah," I had one vacant-eyed clerk tell me recently, "they, um, don't make this medicine."

"You mean, the medicine my doctor prescribed?"

"Yeah."

"You'retelling me you have no record of the medicine my doctor prescribed?That he just made up the name of a drug, wrote it down and sent me hereas a joke?"

"Oh. Um. No," she said. "It's in the computer, but we don't have it."

"So they do make that medicine," I said.

"Um. Yeah, I guess."

"Mind ordering it?"

"Let me get my manager."

I'msure not everyone who works at these chains is stupid. There areprobably some future MacArthur fellows populating the drugstoreworkforce. And for all I know, I have even interacted with these folks.

ButI don't remember them. Because, unlike any other service industry,ineptitude in a drugstore stands out as an affront to humanity. We canall live with a flighty waiter or a bookstore clerk who has never heardof Salinger. Or, even, a newspaper columnist who doesn't know Hartfortfrom Helena. But we really, really need some bright bulbs at thedrugstore.

Drug stores are all we have when we have nothing – inthe middle of the night, when our health is poor, and for some, whenour lives are in jeopardy. How sad, then, that in our darkest hours, weare forced to contend with people who pretty much scream, "We Dare YouNot To Have An Aneurism In The Face of Our Stunning Stupidity."

Sowhen all I need are a few cotton balls – cotton balls I stupidly forgotto pick up with the groceries earlier this week – I think: "I can't doit. I can't go in there." I will shred up an old T-shirt and use thescraps until the next supermarket trip. I will rearrange my scheduleand go to Target tomorrow. I will…

"Sweetie," I say, throwing my arms around my husband. "Mind heading out to the drugstore? I need cotton balls."

"Sure," he says.

Ismile. I watch him from the living room window, waving as he disappearsdown the street, and I think to myself, "Stupid people aren't all bad."